


no way to touch

by eggfish



Category: Devilman (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Attempt at Canon-Typical Dialogue, M/M, OTT Angst, Temporary Death, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-25 19:32:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13841508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggfish/pseuds/eggfish
Summary: The war has gone on nearly twenty years before Asuka Ryo meets Fudou Akira again - not Satan, the beacon of the demon army, but Ryo, materialising perfectly on the scorched Earth like a waxy figurine balanced upright with two fingers, standing, smiling. Here to make a final offer.





	no way to touch

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the original manga, although I have watched Crybaby and it definitely influenced me (I made Akira cry a lot more than I should have, let me indulge).  
> P.S. I’m so fascinated by the bizarre dialogue and tone shifts at the start of Devilman especially, I tried to include a little bit of that magic in this fic… but if not, you know why the dialogue is extra janky lol

The war has gone on nearly twenty years before Asuka Ryo meets Fudou Akira again - not Satan, the beacon of the demon army, but Ryo, materialising perfectly on the scorched Earth like a waxy figurine balanced upright with two fingers, standing, smiling. Here to make a final offer.

He’s directly in front of Akira - no, in front of Devilman, still in his battle form even though the latest wave of demon attacks ended last night. It’s abnormal. Akira never used to have the strength to hold the transformation once the adrenaline left him, and yet now he’s hulking silently on a fragment of concrete foundation, gazing over the rubbled outskirts of the city the devilmen are sheltering in. The demon scouts flying as birds above the land have reported them fortifying the buildings: a futile last stand.

The first thing Devilman does, when he sees Ryo walking toward him over the shattered tiles of whatever public space this used to be, is pinch himself. It’s so endearing. Such a human action. Only humans dream. The white sun setting at Ryo’s back casts a glint into Devilman’s eyes, revealing how his flat yellow gaze roves back and forth confusedly. Only humans doubt.

“Fudou Akira!” Ryo points at him, illuminated. “I’ve come to demand your surrender. Don't attack me!”

No response for a long moment, as Devilman continues to stare. Then, with the tip of one talon, Devilman reaches out and snags at the beige material of Ryo’s coat. Threads unweave and snap with ease. He snatches away immediately. It must have been enough to convince him this is real: his whole body bunches up, muscles condensing into a dark mass and wings splayed for flight. He growls so low Ryo can feel it through the soles of his shoes.

“Satan. I’ll kill you,” he says, in a voice like a revving chainsaw, and he bares his teeth. “Prepare yourself!”

Ryo takes one step closer. “That’s pointless right now.”

“You dare to wear that mask in front of me,” Devilman says, and his wings clench shut and snap open, beating once, twice, again and again until the ashes and dust of the ruined world billow up around him like a stormcloud and his voice can barely be heard over the wind: “I’ll kill you!”

Ryo makes no reaction, and the stormclouds settle down. “You won't. That's why I’m taking this form. Because I want to tell you some things.” A bead of sweat slides down Ryo’s face. He grins. “Humans are sentimental. They react to the face of a friend even if nothing lies beneath. They're weak.”

“I’ll call my army!”

“You won't, though. Where are they? Don’t you stay in a pack for protection?”

Devilman tilts his head, feline almost. “I’m the leader, and I’m Devilman. They need time away from me.”

“You’re far enough away not to be heard and seen, then. That's good. Let’s talk now - drop the Devilman transformation, you must be tired.”

Devilman laughs. “Don't fuck with me! We’re at war. Every shadow is an enemy. Walls have ears - and eyes and teeth. Reverting to human form is inviting death. And I’ve been trying to kill you all this time. Why would I stop? We're at war, so fight me or leave!” He jumps down from his concrete perch and sinks all ten foreclaws into the brown ground, making fists in the earth, and stares at Ryo expectantly.

Ryo crosses his arms, taps a foot. “I can’t hope to even scratch you in this form.” An idea occurs to him. “You should think of this as a dream. It doesn't need to be real or have consequences, so you can calm down.”

Devilman chuckles at that. His head swings back and forth erratically; he gouges the earth again and again with his talons, making furrows of the dead dirt; throws his head back and laughs louder still.

“You idiot. You really think I can - with you this close, do you think I can just calm down!” He gestures meaninglessly, and Ryo feels the air compress as the movement tears a hole in the empty space between them - ”I could touch you, Ryo!” he howls. “My worst enemy… and my best friend!”

He’s taut again, claws flexing and unflexing instinctively, packs of muscle stacking and sliding over each other like continental plates as he hauls his weight to the brink of action before hesitating and pulling back.

It’s unlike Akira, pulling back once his heart is set, but he does, repeatedly - he wavers - and that should be Ryo’s cue to take advantage of his distress, pressure him into agreement. It’s not like he hasn't done it before.

But instead, seeing him hurt and powerless like this, an abrupt surge of frustration and pity and something else wells up in Ryo, brims in his eyes, currents of human emotion responding like water to gravity. He can't watch this any more. He walks closer, closer, closer, pushing against the barrier between them, until he can see Devilman’s whole body heaving like a bellows and feel the fever rising off his skin. Devilman exhales one final jet of hot air through flared nostrils, turns his head down and watches silently as Ryo approaches.

Ryo's face is about level with Devilman’s navel, and he can see the lurching rise and fall of his stomach with every ragged breath. He reaches out a hand, traces the hard line of Devilman’s waist down to bury his fingers in the coarse fur of his thigh, and stands on tiptoe to plunge the long knife he’s materialised straight into Devilman’s heart-

He’s batted away like a pinball before he can even mime the action, and as his ragdoll body cannonballs through the air he laughs wild and high at the simple violent feeling of it - then he hits a rock, cracks his skull open and dies. He replaces his broken body with little more than a thought, letting the old one crumble into dust behind him, and looks up as Devilman bounds toward him.

“Are you satisfied now?” he asks, but Devilman is obviously not so Ryo draws the knife out again and Devilman roars and kicks him vertically into the air. He sees the whole barren cityscape spinning flashing black-white-red-blue underneath him before Devilman catches up in a single wingbeat and launches him back downward with two pounding fists.

Ryo breaks his spine in seven places on impact and so he should feel nothing as Devilman plummets back down and snaps him in half, cratering the ground underneath. But there's something, there, as he catches the look in Devilman’s eye for a split second -

He revives himself so Devilman can pulverise his face, skull splintering and teeth separating and brains mashing into the dust as he takes punch after blindingly painful punch. Again, and his abdomen is shredded open glistening red, most of his vital organs crushed in a single fist. Again, and he’s ripped limb from limb with wet pops and sprays of blood. Devilman howls raw with impotent desperation.

That's the strangest part about being human again after all this time, Ryo contemplates, in disjointed flashes. Pain - visceral real pain, nothing like the aloof dissatisfaction of an angel. There's the pain as a gout of flames peels his flesh from the bone. There’s another pain too, lodged in him somewhere violence can't gouge it out, a pain he has no idea how to deal with.

 

\--

 

In total Devilman kills Ryo nine times. The last of three consecutive strangulations peters out as Devilman’s clawtips slide into the flesh of his neck, puncturing his windpipe, and suddenly it's Akira collapsing onto him with soft fingers squeezing the wounds closed, blood staining his hands and pouring out red into the grey sea of dust beneath them. He’s crying silently, and a tear floods off his face and lands on Ryo’s cheek as Akira hangs his head, pressing their foreheads together.

Well, Ryo wants to talk, and he can't talk like this, when his throat is stabbing and stomach churning and tears welling again in simple sympathy, so he lets that body crumble away underneath Akira and makes a final new one, just in front of him. He crouches down.

“Akira! Don't cry... You did well. You managed to become human again. Don't cry.”

Akira looks up at him and back down at the sterile bloodless dirt again, and cries harder. Ryo waits for him to calm down, but it never quite happens.

“When I see you like this…” Akira shakes his head. “I can only remember the man I used to be best friends with...”  

When Ryo sees Akira like that, it’s hard not to remember simpler times himself. So much energy must have drained out of him when he dropped the Devilman form - he looks more fragile than he ever did after merging with Amon, jaw less defined, muscles smaller. Possession has stopped him from aging even a day. Within him is an echo of the child Ryo had set out to protect.

“Our friendship was founded on lies,” Ryo points out, unable to stop himself from explaining. He’s always loved to tell Akira things, he’s always loved it when Akira listens to him.

But Akira isn't listening this time. “You had nobody else to take care of you but me,” he says softly, as if that fact alone negates the planted memories and the duplicity and the manipulation. He might as well have wrapped his hands around Ryo’s neck again. “You stuck out. Nobody liked your bad attitude, and your father was out of town all the time. I thought I understood how you felt. And - I liked how you were always on my side no matter what. None of that was lies.”

Ryo grits his teeth. “Always on your side. But you say we’re enemies now.”

“Yeah. I don't understand - I can't see... If I had just seen where it all went wrong. If I had just seen it I could have stopped you!”

“Akira. Have you ever heard the expression: 'the sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons?’”

“Yeah.”

“None of this is your fault. Nor is it mine. It’s the result of a flaw: an endless, recursive flaw in this world God constructed!” Akira doesn't react to his words. Ryo goes on.

”We are all children of that world. It was a natural result that as demons had evolved outside of God’s design, so too would humans outside of the demons’, new creatures, weak and corrupted by morality. They did nothing but eat at this shining planet... It’s not their fault they needed to be scoured away in order for us to return to paradise. Think of tapeworms and fleas: you kill them only because they're inherently harmful to you. They do nothing wrong.”

“Tapeworms and fleas.” Akira echoes, stopping Ryo short. There’s an odd note in his voice. “Is that really what you think of me?”  Akira raises his head for the first time to look Ryo in the eye almost accusingly. Tears still leak from his red-rimmed eyes, washing his cheeks clean.

Ryo thinks Akira is very beautiful like this. He leans down and wipes the tears from Akira’s face with the side of one thumb. “I came here to tell you I’m going to kill you,” he says gently. Perhaps too gently for the original Ryo. The original Ryo wouldn't have thought to touch him like this either.

“We’ll _never_ stop fighting,” Akira says, and he jerks his head, presumably in the direction of his misfit army. “That’s who we are. Devilmen with the hearts of humans. We don't give in.”

His conviction burns so hot. He’s so damn blockheaded. Impatience churns suddenly inside Ryo’s empty belly. “Akira, all the humans are _dead_.”

“Ha! I don’t care. I haven’t fought for humans in a long time now.” There’s a bitter smile in his voice Ryo has never heard before. His gaze is strong and unreadable.

“Then why? What are you fighting and dying for?” Ryo shakes him by the shoulders. ”Akira, don't be foolish! Join me and you could _live._ You don't have to suffer like this. You’ve known that all along!”

He knows he comes off as desperate, clutching at Akira and begging, and that he shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be here at all. He gave Akira his last chance twenty years ago. But no matter how many times he fails he’s never quite been able to shake this logical notion: that if he pushes hard enough, backs Akira into a dark enough corner, destroys _every other Goddamned option in existence_ then maybe he’ll finally get Akira to see sense and choose him.

“Ryo.” Akira lowers his eyes, smooths his warm callused hand over Ryo’s where it grips his shoulder. “Hating you is the only justice I have left,” he says quietly. “Don't try to take this from me too.”

He stands up, shaking Ryo off him like water off a stone, and glances to the side again. “You should go before they get here.” In the distance, there’s the rumbling sound of feet-hooves-paws-wings-voices, other devilmen come to investigate the sounds.

Ryo clenches his fists and takes another step forward, but he’s the helpless one now. There’s no way for him to touch Akira anymore. He bows his head just as the rage begins to boil over, and lets himself dissolve into a pillar of grey dust for the last time, cold consciousness flying back up to the sky.

 

\--

 

When Satan returns to his body an attendant demon is hovering over him. The vivid spines along her back smooth down in an expression of relief as she sees his eyes open.

“We couldn't wake you,” she chatters nervously. “Is everything okay?”

Satan rolls over in the air and stretches. “It’s fine,” he says. “I was just... having a dream.”

“A dream? I didn't know it was possible for demons. Or for, ah, angels.” This attendant is clearly too new to know her place or how to handle herself. Satan decides to let it slide, and answer her. He’s always liked demons’ honesty.

“That’s right. It was just something left over from my time living as a human. A side-effect.”

“Oh…” she says, tone of voice betraying a complete lack of understanding. ”What are dreams like?”

“They’re a way for you to process the things that happen while you’re awake,” Satan says absently. “Your brain simulates scenarios based on your memories, repeating them over and over again in order to train your responses. Essentially, it’s a form of practice for real life.”

“That sounds convenient,” the attendant says, and chitters. “I could grow stronger and stronger even in my sleep! I could satisfy my lusts even off the battlefield!”

“Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. You can't consciously control what happens in your dreams. It’s more likely to have a nightmare about one of your worries or regrets.”

“But I am no human! I don't have worries or regrets.” The demon draws herself up, puffing out her lumpy patchwork chest. “Even I, a low soldier, take pride in my superiority over those weakling humans.”

“Very good. Your response is the same in every situation, base and instinctual; that is why you don't need to dream.”

And for Satan, it should be the same. He should have a pure and simple will uncorrupted by a heart - so this 'dream’ of his, looking back,  should be meaningless. Nothing should have come of it. Satan ignores the cruel sensation that pushes through his detachment whenever he thinks of Akira’s resentful stare. He won't let his human memories get in his way.

He lolls his head back to look upward at the Earth below. It’s ugly. The planet has slowly changed colour as it was purified of its parasites, bleached to a grey dot, every acre of land consecrated with a death. Satan focuses on his goal: he will see the planet blazing with raw green life again, lit with blue skies and red blood. A paradise for those cast out by God. He will not lose sight of that justice, at any cost.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this fic in a burning overemotional state the week after finishing both the manga and Crybaby in quick succession so I... have no idea how it's turned out... but it helped me sort out my feelings on these two, and I hope you enjoyed it  
> and as ever I'm mostly on twitter @star_goldfish!


End file.
